NEARLY 200 British bloggers say that they are ready to break the Official Secrets Act and go to jail to publish a memo that allegedly proves that President Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar.

“We’re finding it hard to keep track of those wanting to join us. We appreciate the support and you look like a fine bunch of potential cell mates,” the BlairWatch website at the centre of the campaign said.

The bloggers’ strategy could complicate the position of Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney- General, who warned the media not to publish the document. Being seen to send hundreds of ordinary people to prison over the matter could prove politically suicidal for the Government.

According to Mirror.co.uk, the memo revealed that Mr Bush had planned to bomb the Arab TV station but was “talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash”. Al- Jazeera has started its own blog, dontbomb. “Failure to disclose the contents of the memo . . . will undermine relations between media and government, and Western and Arab worlds,” it said.

www.mirror.co.uk
www.blairwatch.co.uk
www.dontbomb.blogspot.com
www.english.aljazeera.net

Lack of intelligence

“The CIA now has its own bloggers,” reported The Washington Post. It seems that the agency’s spies were so wrapped up in gathering intelligence from undercover operations that they missed “the nuggets of genuine information” available online. The CIA has thus set up several blogs, accessible by agents on an “unclassified” site. There remains the issue of spy cachet. It appears it does little for a spook’s credibility to admit his latest dossier came from a Google search. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, said: “Nobody wants to say, ‘Oh, (I) found this on a server in Belgium.’ ”

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